Medieval England

Medieval England was an era of English history which lasted from 1066 to 1485, from the inauguration of Norman rule and feudalism in England after the Battle of Hastings to the end of the Wars of the Roses at the Battle of Bosworth Field and the emergence of the Early Modern period and the English Renaissance.

Background
The old aristocratic Saxon and Anglo-Danish families were swept away after the Norman invasion, and their lands taken over by William the Conqueror, his family, and his Norman and French followers.

The Normans were organized for war. They introduced a new type of landholding, feudalism, designed to keep them in a state of battle readiness. King William I took all the land into his own hands and granted large estates to his main supporters in return for specified military service. These "great men", the tenants-in-chief of the King, granted land to their own supporters who undertook to give military service as knights, the battle-winning armored cavalry of the 11th and 12th centuries. The men and women who worked the land for their lords, either as free peasants or as unfree tenants, made up the greater part of the population. The rhythm of their lives remained relatively unchanged, subject to the seasons.

History
The ruling class, the king, his family, the leaders of the Church, bishops, and abbots, and the great landowners, were all Norman or French. After the conquest, the largest estates went to William's family and to his companions in battle. William's half brother Odo, the Bishop of Bayeux, was given the Bishopric of Winchester and lands in Kent. Families such as the FitzOsberns and de Warennes were granted landholdings across several counties. French was their language. From their estates they had access to the best food, and acquired the best horses, armor, and the finest clothes and jewellery form the revenues they collected.

Kings and aristocrats
The Norman kings established "The Forest", large areas of land reserved for royal hunts, and subject to special laws designed to preserve these habitats. Game such as deer, wild boar, and birds could be caught in The Forest for sport and to supply aristocratic tables with meat. Indeed, hunting and hawking were important features of aristocratic society, teaching skills that would be useful in war. The great families were part of an international society and had as much contact with their kin in Normandy, France, or Flanders as with the tenants to whom they granted land. When they were not obeying the king's summons to attend him, they were constantly on the move between their estates.

Life in the countryside
The majority of people lived in the countryside, which was divided into thousands of landholdings called manors. A manor usually included a village and its surroundings, although some manors incorporated several settlements. Fields were open, long, narrow strips of land. The peasants who worked the land paid part of their annual harvest ot the lord of the manor as rent, another part went ot the Church. Some peasants were free tenants, others were unfree (villeins), who worked the lord's own fields. They were required to give the lord labor and to pay certain fines (fees) such as heriot, when inheriting a landholding, and merchet, on the marriage of a daughter. The lord of the manor protected his tenants in times of war and acted as judge in disputes between neighbors.

Some knights owned only one or two manors, but most had several, and managed them through an agent called a reeve. Large estates consisting of numerous manors, often widely scattered around the country, were known as honors. Abbeys and cathedrals owned manors, as did secular lords.

Population growth
During the Norman period, the population rose from around 2,250,000 in 1086 to an estimated 5,750,000 by 1220. To meet this increase, forests were cleared to bring new lands called "assart" into cultivation, reducing the amount of woodland in England from 15% to 10% of the total land surface. Some changes in landholding took place too, as land farmed directly by the lords of the manor was turned into smallholdings for freemen and villeins who paid cash rents. The expansion of economic life led to changing social bonds. Many obligations of service, whether providing a knight, or working on a lord's land, were commuted into cash payments, and the use of coins became more important.

Sheep were an increasingly profitable commodity. As well as providing meat and cheese, their skins were used for parchment. They were most valued for their wool, which was exported in bulk to the weavers of Flanders during the 12th and 13th centurires. Many of the great monasteries became specialists in sheep farming.

Urban centers
Growing popultion and increased agricultural production went hand in hand with a rise in the number and size of towns. The Domesday Book identifies 112 towns. Approximately 150 years later this number had grown to 240, all founded by royal charter. The greatest of these were London, Lincoln, Norwich, York, and Winchester. From a population of 15,000 in the days of William I, London had grown to 80,000 inhabitants in 1300. All the major towns were religious centers, often cathedral cities, but they were also market towns and centers of manufacture.

Surplus agricultural produce was brought from country estates to be sold in the towns, and merchants found a ready market there for goods such as wine and furs. The most common urban trades were those involved with the supply of food and drink - brewers, bakers, and butchers. Every town had at least one tailor, ironsmith, carpenter, shoemaker, and weaver. Only the large centers would have had more specialized craftsmen.

Town dwellers
Besides the king, other landowners granted charters to build new market towns. These were a source of profit for those who established them and for the merchants and artisans who lived there. Anyone, whatever his origin, who could prove he had lived in a town for a year and a day was a freeman. If he held land in a town, he would have burgage rights, which meant he could subdivide, sell, mortgage, and bequeath it freely. The royal boroughs were governed by the king's officials, but the richer merchants also played a major part in the administration. Clergy of every rank and type lived in the towns, and schools for the education of boys were attached to cathedrals and monasteries. The universities of Oxford and Cambridge came into being. Instruction was always in Latin, the language of the Church. Books were still rare objects; texts were copied and illustrated by hand.

Aftermath
This period of prosperity, population gwrowth, and increased economic activity came to an end at the beginning of the 14th century. In 1314, a bad harvest hit Britain, and for the next seven years (1317 was the only exception), repeated violent winds and rainstorms destroyed crops and caused disease in livestock. As crop yields fell, landowners found themselves without grain surpluses to boost their incomes. In parts of southern England, the harvest was 55% below normal, and some areas suffered famine. Town life stagnated as demand for manufactured goods fell, and exports of cloth and wool declined. In 1304, 46,000 sacks of wool were exported from England; 15 years later this figure fell to 30,000. There is evidence that villages began to be abandoned early in the 14th century, as the amount of cultivated land contracted, a crisis that deepened after the widespread devastation and depopulation of the Black Death.